THE GROOVE BOOK REPORT

Announcing a new picture book written by one of the world’s most famous and best loved grandfathers, Paul McCartney.  Hey Grandude!   will publish globally in September 2019 and is a heart-warming family story inspired by Paul’s own experience of being a grandfather. ITV’s This Morning announced the news exclusively, showing a video of Paul speaking about his new picture book. You can watch Paul McCartney announce his new picture book  Hey Grandude ! 

LitCrawl 2018 Over 50 events from Thursday 8 - Sunday 11 November We are celebrating our fifth birthday this year! Thank you to friends,  supporters , writers, publishers and LitCrawlers who have got us this far. The programme is now  up online  and will be arriving to venues throughout Wellington over the next few days. Enjoy reading and planning your LitCrawl 2018! Between Thursday 8 November and Sunday 11 November we have over 50 events to keep you busy, energised and interested. Here are are few highlights: The Crawl:  Of course  the epic crawl  that started this whole shebang is back. On Saturday 10 November between 6pm - 9.15pm there are 25 events throughout Wellington's CBD. There is a session on  killing off characters  with Elizabeth Knox, Annaleese Jochems and Steff Green; there is  Lit-Synch for your Life  in which drag queens lip synch songs that inspired writers Tayi Tibble, Pip Adam and Simon Sweetman;  Emily W...

A second collection by one of New Zealand’s most powerful young voices, now out in the wide world. Doesn’t language get tired? Doesn’t it get sick of lulling us into believing all the *** we say? Isn’t love also the kind of cruelty you give to someone because you can’t hold all that cruelty in your own hands? All I know’s I’m overflowing. All I know’s I’m overflowing and I’m not sure how much of me the world can hold.            – From ‘Epilogue’ In Nowhere Nearer Alice Miller takes us inside a European world full of ruins and memories, haunted by Sigmund Freud and Eva Braun, betrayals and loss. Miller’s poetry is clear and brittle, full of glass doors that spit the sun back. It is deeply ruminative, rich with the circularity of thought, the company of the dead, and the lure of alternative futures. Since you left me I walk around here a lot. I’m not dead, either. To be not dead, I claim, is the most marvellous thing in the world. Th...

Clive James has been close to death for several years, and he has written about the experience in a series of deeply moving poems. In Sentenced to Life, he was clear-sighted as he faced the end, honest about his regrets. In Injury Time, he wrote about living well in the time remaining, focusing our attention on the joys of family and art, and celebrating the immediate beauty of the world. At the opening of The River in the Sky , a book-length poem, we find James in ill health but high spirits. Although his body traps him in his Cambridge house, his mind is free to roam. "That is the way my memories connect/ Now that they have no pattern/all I can do is make the pictures click"" The River in the Sky takes us on a grand tour of ‘the fragile treasures of his life’. Animated by powerful recollections, James presents a flowing stream of vivid images. He moves from emotionally resonant personal moments, such as listening to jazz records with his future wife, to unfor...

Sat 15 September: Book Launch at Going West Writers Festival Attend the launch of C. K. Stead's new poetry collection at Going West Writers Festival. C. K. Stead will read from and sign copies of his new book  That Derrida Whom I Derided Died: Poems 2013–2017  (available for purchase at the event). Drinks and nibbles provided.  Find out more information here . 5.30–7pm, Saturday 15 September Going West , Titirangi War Memorial Hall, 500 South Titirangi Rd This is a new collection from New Zealand’s most distinguished living poet. In his eighty-sixth year, C. K. Stead’s  That Derrida Whom I Derided Died  leads us deep inside the life of the poet. He looks back at his younger self, remembering old loves, cringing at his ‘lugubrious rhyming’ and takes us with him on the poetical life: from Dogshit Park in Budapest to a Zagreb bookshop to the Christchurch Word Festival.

Ok, so it would be hard to find a family that hasn't spent at least one 1/3 of their lives travelling to or from a sports game on Saturday morning.  Or yelling at the TV when the Boks play the All Blacks or the Silver Ferns pony up to The Aussies or the Olympics are on and the rowers are lining up or... well, any team or individual playing for us or our team.  Sport is our warrior class, our totem and our religion.  It's in our DNA, as the advert would have us think. is it? Well, this book might help us think so.  It traces the history of sport here in this little collection of islands.  It covers our recorded history right from earliest days. The first chapter deals with pre-1840 era, reviewing the establishment of most games, brought over from the Mother Country, but also from China and the Americas.  It seems that even on the goldfields, the Colonists were keen to crack out a bat and ball or toss a pigskin.  Anything for a bit of fun. Writte...

Back Archive Move Delete Spam 11 Sep at 4:45 PM AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL PRESENTS AN EVENING WITH LEE CHILD & JACK REACHER Join master of suspense and bestselling crime writer Lee Child in conversation with broadcaster Jim Mora at this exclusive Auckland event, celebrating  Past Tense  and the return of Jack Reacher. Child’s books consistently achieve the number-one slot on bestseller lists around the world, with one Jack Reacher novel reportedly sold every nine seconds somewhere on the planet. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger for a writer of an outstanding body of crime fiction, the International Thriller Writers’ Thriller Master Award, and the Theakston Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award. This is a special not-to-be-missed event and is proudly presented by Auckland Writ...

Ever wondered what it would be like to be a conjoined twin – and then not? Set in the near future, False Hearts explores a new world – one largely free of crime, thanks to technologically advanced bio-inserts, and Zeal – an addictive drug that allows users to plug in and act out their ultimate fantasies – in a dream. Conjoined twins, Tila and Taema, are relative newcomers to this modern San Francisco utopia. They were raised in a cult, isolated from the modern world and denied life-changing medicine. Only when their shared heart threatened to give out, a daring escape was planned to smuggle the twins out of the Mana’s Hearth compound. Fast forward 10 years, and the separated twins have embraced the new world and all the technological advantages it brings. With mechanical hearts, and the ability to download information directly into their brain, the twins have managed to put their past behind them and create new lives. Until the night Tila stumbles home, covered ...

Applications for the 2019 Creative New Zealand Randell Cottage Writers Fellowship are open! Read more about the residency and download the application form at https://www.randellcottage.co.nz/residency . And tell us what you would do, with six months' accommodation and $22,000: Applications close on Friday, 2 November 2018.